Chapter 13 The Digital Proof
Brittany's POV
The camera was live again.
I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands folded in my lap and my face arranged into something blank and tired, the expression of a sad woman who had cried herself empty and was now just existing. Leo was pressed flat against the wall beside the wardrobe, completely still, completely silent. I could see the edge of his shoe from where I was sitting but the camera angle couldn't.
We stayed like that for four full minutes.
I counted them.
When the red light blinked into its next reset cycle, Leo exhaled and slid down to sit on the floor with his back against the wall. He opened the laptop again, keeping the screen angled low.
"We have thirty two hours before the next reset," he said quietly. "But we can't use all of it. Someone might notice the gap pattern if the feeds go clean for too long."
"How much time do we actually have?"
"Safe window is about twenty minutes. Maybe twenty five." He looked up at me. "Enough for what I need to show you."
I got off the bed and sat on the floor beside him, close enough that we could both see the screen without the glow reaching the camera. The passage panel was still closed behind the wardrobe. The room was dark except for the laptop light.
"Show me everything," I said.
Leo pulled up the first file.
It was the video of Chloe's kitchen again, the same footage he had shown me before the camera reset. But this time he let it run longer. After Chloe mixed the powder and made the phone call, she sat down at her kitchen table and opened an envelope. She counted the cash inside it slowly, her lips moving. Then she smiled. It was a wide, satisfied smile, the smile of someone who had just closed a very good deal.
I watched her face and tried to find the friend I had known for six years inside it. The girl who had held my hand at my parents memorial. Who had celebrated every small design win with me. Who had told me to sign that contract at the hospital because she genuinely wanted to help me.
I couldn't find her anywhere in that smile.
"Next one," I said.
Leo opened the audio file of Marcus. This time he played it from the beginning, the full recording, not just the excerpt he had shared earlier. It was longer than I expected. Twelve minutes of Marcus giving a detailed and precise account of my life inside the mansion. He described which hallways I used, which windows I stood at, how long I spent in the garden, whether I seemed frightened or calm or suspicious.
At one point the person on the other end of the call asked, "Has she connected with the old woman yet?"
Marcus said, "Not yet. But she will. They always do."
"When that happens, increase the tea dosage."
"Understood."
I pressed my fingers against the cold floor and breathed slowly.
"Who is Marcus talking to?" I asked.
"Thomas," Leo said. "I matched the voice print against a public interview Thomas gave two years ago. Ninety four percent confidence."
"And the bank transfer?"
Leo pulled up a third window. A financial record, clean and clear, showing a transfer of fifty thousand dollars from an account registered to Richard Blackwell into a personal account in Chloe's name. The date was the morning after my wedding.
"They paid her before she even came to visit me," I said.
"They paid her to make sure you never got strong enough to be a threat," Leo said. "The compound in that tea wasn't meant to kill you quickly. It was slow acting. It would have kept you foggy and tired and emotionally unstable for months without you ever knowing why."
I thought about the days since arriving at the mansion. The heaviness I had felt in the mornings. The way grief had seemed to sit on my chest like a physical weight. I had assumed it was everything that had happened to me. Adam. Bianca. The rain. The contract. I had blamed myself for not recovering faster.
"I barely drank any of it," I said.
"I know. I was watching." Leo glanced at me sideways. "The plant died though."
"Yes it did."
He almost smiled. I almost did too.
"Okay," I said. "The formula. Tell me about the formula."
Leo closed the financial window and opened a document. It was dense with chemical notation that I couldn't read, but at the top was a plain language summary that his analyst contact had written. I read it carefully, twice.
The compound in Chloe's tea was a slow acting neurological suppressant. It reduced mental clarity, caused fatigue, emotional dysregulation, and over time, physical weakness. It was not immediately lethal. It was designed to diminish a person gradually.
Below the compound description, Leo had added a note in red text.
It read: "Compound base matches sample B. See attached."
"What is sample B?" I asked.
Leo took a breath. "Three weeks ago I managed to get into the mansion's medical waste disposal. There was a used syringe in there, improperly bagged, which means someone got careless. I had the residue analyzed by the same contact." He tapped the screen. "Same compound base. Different concentration. Stronger. More targeted."
I stared at the screen. "Where did that syringe come from?"
"Based on disposal location and timing, the most likely source was David's private bathroom."
The room felt very still.
"Someone is giving this to David," I said.
"Has been, for a while, based on the concentration levels in the residue. This didn't start recently." Leo looked at me directly. "Britt, whatever is wrong with him, the impotence rumors, the weakness, the condition everyone whispers about, it isn't natural. Someone built it. Someone has been building it deliberately for a long time."
I sat with that for a moment.
I thought about David's hands on the dinner table. The way he sometimes gripped the edge of his chair when he stood. The control he maintained over every expression, every movement, every word, and how much energy that kind of control must cost a man whose body was quietly being destroyed.
"He doesn't know," I said.
"I don't think so," Leo said. "Or if he suspects, he doesn't know the source."
"Who has access to his private bathroom?"
"That's the question." Leo closed the document. "The list is short. Elena. His personal valet. And Marcus."
Marcus again.
I looked at the USB drive still hanging around Leo's neck. "Is all of this on that drive?"
"Every file. Every recording. Every transfer record and analysis report."
I held out my hand.
Leo looked at me for a moment, reading my face the way he had always been able to do since we were children. Then he lifted the cord over his head and placed the drive in my palm.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
I closed my fingers around it. The plastic was warm from sitting against his skin.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly. "But I know I'm not going to cry about it."
Leo nodded slowly. He reached into his bag and pulled out a fresh energy drink, cracking it open quietly.
"There's one more thing," he said, his voice dropping lower. "The compound source. I traced the supply chain as far back as I could." He paused. "It leads to a pharmacy account. The account is registered to a staff member here in the mansion."
"Which staff member?" I asked.
Leo looked at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before. Careful. Almost reluctant.
"It's registered to Elena," he said.